76 THE FERTILITY OF THE SOIL [ch. 



flush with the mud in 1851 are now more than ten 

 feet above the surface. 



Many of the magnificent alluvial meadows of the 

 country have been made in the same way from rushy 

 wastes. The well-known Brooks at Lewes give an 

 example : originally only a bog of buUrushes, let for 

 a trifling sum to chair bottom makers, they have for 

 the past 80 years been fertile pastures carrying sheep 

 and bullocks, yielding heavy crops of hay and contri- 

 buting much to the wealth of the district. 



These large schemes were early imitated by a few 

 progressive agriculturists troubled with marshy or 

 boggy fields. Walter Blith, a Yorkshire Puritan and 

 "lover of Ingenuity," as he styled himself on the title- 

 page of his English Improver (1649), had indeed 

 already published methods that the farmer could 

 adopt. He begins by pointing out that the causes of 

 soil infertility "are usually two, 1 in Man himself, 2 in 

 the Land itself. In Man himself it was occasionally, 

 who by his sin procured a curse upon the Land, even 

 Barrennesse." Of the defects in the land, one of the 

 worst can be removed by " Drayning, or taking away 

 Superfluous and Venomous Water, which lyeth in 

 the Earth, and much occasioneth Boggiuess, Miriness, 

 Rushes, Flags, and other filth, and is indeed the 

 chief cause of Barrenness in any land of this nature." 

 He goes on to set out the essential condition that the 

 drains must fall gradually but consistently from the 



